Delta Bidding for Bumps and the Amex Card Offer Gets Bigger

January 22, 2011 - Rick

Several of you have emailed me to ask about the new Delta Bidding for Bumps option. As I understand it, when you review your itinerary on a soon-to-be-flown flight, if the flight is oversold, Delta will ask you to bid on a bump. We are all assuming that the person willing to accept the smallest compensation (in travel vouchers), and be put on a later flight, will get the “bump,” thereby saving Delta mucho dinero. I’m sure it will.Delta will still have to control which passengers get bumped since they may have some volunteers at the lowest bid that they can’t get home immediately, or that take multiple connections and out-of-the-way routes. It is unknown at this point how they will handle groups of travelers. Will they split them? Must everyone on an itinerary agree to be bumped? There are still lots of questions to be answered.

I don’t fly Delta unless I have to. Delta overcharges for award tickets, has lousy low-tier awards availability until you’re very close to your travel dates, and compensates its members poorly for customer-service errors. Many people agree. As evidence, Delta’s miles in black market trading are worth way less than AA, CO, US or UA miles (one third less is my guess).

But from an airline profitability standpoint, the move makes sense for Delta. I am absolutely convinced they will get uneducated fliers to accept $100 for a four-hour delay, maybe even less. If they can work out the logistics of the bidding process, they will save millions. And there’s very little we can do about it. It’s their company. They set the rules.

I’m not sure at this point if the Department of Transportation will step in at some point and guarantee a minimum compensation. Nor am I sure if the other airlines will follow. We are experiencing the ebb and flow of the business cycle. Two years ago, the airlines couldn’t give away seats and were losing money by the millions each day. Today, they’ve corrected many of their balance sheet issues through bankruptcy and better management so they are profitable again. Bottom line: We’re paying more in fees and receiving less for bumps.

The cycle is going their way at the moment.

Amex Card Offer Looks Way Better Now

Hi Rick,
Your BLOG 50k link for the AMEX MR card just got better cuz they are doing the 50% bonus and 25k MQM for those who did not do last round:

http://dmn.delta.com/offers/getmore/

Thus you end up for $450 fee getting 75k for sending over 50k MR points and 25k free MQM and instant Silver status until FEB2013! (free the rest of this year and all of next year since you earned status NOW!)!!!

This is an great deal IMO. You can even work it with some other cards to EZ get GOLD status or even Platinum.

Here are Rene’s instructions to get the deal done.

FIRST! FIRST! FIRST!

http://dmn.delta.com/offers/getmore/

Next sign up for the promotion and make sure it shows in your DELTA account here:

https://dmn.delta.com/cgi-bin/viewpromo.pro

Then yes get the card

Then link your DELTA account to MR. MR let’s you “advance” 50k right away btw. So, send over the 50k, net out 75k + get 25k MQM on top of that. Then spend $1000 and earn the 50k bonus (to pay back the 50k you advanced!)

Here is the link to the Flyertalk thread.

Mint coins are here BTW:

http://catalog.usmint.gov/webapp/wcs…category=16238

ENJOY!

Got’a love DELTA!

Yours,

Rene

Free Ten Day Trial

Elizabeth W.

Rookie Tip- best program to sign up for.

I've found that one of the most useful programs to be a member of is the Starwood Preferred Guest program. The reason is that the points can be used for either hotel stays or for many airline mileage programs (and if you transfer 20,000 miles, they throw in another 5,000 for free).

This flexibility is great for infrequent travelers or for new travelers who are not sure what their travel pattern will be like yet.

-Elizabeth
elizabeth(at)thetravellingadventurer.com
Mike D

I highly suggest Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) as I know Rick also does. The AMEX credit card is great value and service, the program allows cash and points as well as transfer to airlines with bonus. The hotels are very nice also with reasonable redemption and 5th night free.
gtg007w

I'm sure this is not the case, but does anyone know if transferring points from some program (say, AMEX) to SPG and then transferring those points to your airline program will still qualify those points for the 20% bonus?

For e.g., I have 20,000 pts in AMEX member rewards. I transfer those to SPG. Then transfer the newly converted points in SPG to Delta. Will that 20,000 become 25,000 with the bonus?
Rich A.

Rookie Tip: All of them(!) that you could possibly collect miles and/or points on. Most programs offer miles/points for other than "in seat" time or stays. Rich A.
Anonymous

Awardwallet.com? Sorry.. but for a "rookie traveler" this is not all that great of a tip IMO. Being that most rookie travelers probably do not have that many miles spread on to several different airline and hotel programs.

I think a good rookie tip would be something along the lines of how to keep your miles from expiring, like using a shopping portal and making a cheap itunes purchase to have a few miles post to your account.

Or.. maybe places to look for good travel deals. Certain search engines like kayak or orbitz to find cheap flights. Or how "hack" priceline to get amazing deals on hotels.

Rookie travelers are not going to be going on mileage runs and be taking flights often enough to warrant tracking all their programs. It's not a bad suggestion, but why don't you get to the meat and potatoes of how you are getting cheap/free travel? The whole churning credit cards would be a good place to start, or possibly just suggesting the top rewards earning credit cards for each category, for cash rebates, for hotels, and for flights. Or how about review the capital one travel card or travelocity.
Andyandy

Rookie Tip-
I'm going with ANA (All Nippon Airways). Sounds crazy, right? Well there are two good reasons to join.

The first is that ANA is a member of the Star Alliance and has a great award search engine that will show you award availability on any Star Alliance partner. Gary @ viewfromthewing explains how here: http://boardingarea.com/blogs/viewfromthewing/2010/06/17/ana-website-no-longer-allows-members-without-any-miles-to-search-for-star-allaince-awards/ You can then use that information to book your award flight with a US carrier.

The second reason is relates to Starwood. *wood points transfer into ANA miles and ANA has a distance based award chart. That means that, in many circumstances, you can get premium cabin travel for fewer miles than you would with a US carrier. Good luck!
Frequent flyer junkie

Rookie Tips
Cindy M
I'm with Elizabeth W, STARWOOD is the best hotel program to join. But don't listen to some of those anonomous posters out there that are nay sayers. Join every program you can get your hands on. Like I said before, that way you are ready for when the next sign up bonus comes your way. I, personally like AA, for great availability, but just last night I found availablity at a decent mileage amount to Istanbul on skypesos Delta, so you just never know.
One last rookie comment, and maybe I have been traveling too long, but make the ole bucket list. Don't do it by priority, just write them down. Then, as the miles build, and you are checking award flight travel, just do the deal that works for your time schedule and is free. All places on the bucket list will eventually come available. Some sooner than others, but there are too many facinating places in the world to limit your self to just the number one or two on the bucket list.
Good Luck!
Cindy M
Jonathan

Rookie Tip, Jonathan H.
While my tip of course would be SPG, not only because of the transfer bonus, but also it's not that hard to find a Four Points for 3000 points or less (pretty long stay for a 30k Amex bonus). My alternate suggestion would be any and all, especially if there is a sign up bonus or status. Some programs will offer free status or a few hundered or even a few thousand points for a new signup. Even if you never use the hotel or carrier, it might be worth a subscription to a magazine. During my MBA program, I paid for subscriptions to WSJ, and the Economist for several semesters from free sign up points on carriers I never use. As mentioned last week, hotel status matches are so simple, ignoring a free status like the current Marriott offer, even if you never stay with them, is just foolish.
Ai W.

ROOKIE TIP

The SPG Amex card. Besides the 5,000 bonus miles that everyone raves about, you can actually book flights with your points. And the number of points needed is based on the price of the flight. Not exactly sure about the price tier, but I believe its:

10,000 points – $150 or less
15,000 points – $200 or less
20,000 points – $200 – $xxx
List goes on

I've booked a round-trip flight that was priced at $215 in Orbitz for 15,000 SPG points. My point is if you know the price of yr flight, get the most bang out of your points from this award program. Hotels redemption is great too!

AW
apeleanor@hotmail.com
tivoboy

Personally, award site aggreators have been around for years and I am happy to see that their evolution has paralleled needs and usable functionality.

That said, the reason I have never used them and will continue NOT to use them is one of security. With one login to the aggregator, and then putting in ALL your individual site information user names and passwords makes the overall risk of a data breach too high. Sites being compromised is happening daily and they get user names and passwords. With a site AGGREGATOR ALL your user names and passwords would then be compromised. Someone could book a ticket, transfer miles, and in many cases even get your CREDIT CARD NUMBER from an airline site. For me, it simply isn't work the risk. Staying diversified with multiple logins to multiple accounts keeps the risk exposure much lower overall.
Steve

BigCrumbs.com and other online cashback websites are usually overlooked.

All you need to do is sign up for a free account and find the online retailer you want to make a purchase with. For airfate and hotels I use often use Expedia.com and get very good cashback rates. Once your travel is completed, BigCrumbs will deposit the cashback into your account which you can then transfer to Paypal, etc.

For example: I booked a $3,600 flight for my father on a business class ticket to Australia and received almost $60 cashback. This is in addition to the Expedia coupons/discounts and better rate than anywhere else. No bad for an extra 30 seconds of internet clicks!
Katie S

Rookie Tip:

US Airways. Why? Although we haven't seen much in the past few months, in the past they have had pretty great deals for accruing airlines, whether through the Grand Slam promo or buying miles at a 50% discount. I was able to use SPG points combined with US Airways miles to get a pretty cheap couple of First class tickets for my husband and I on Lufthansa. Yes, I am fully aware that hasn't been as easy feat as of recently, but I was able to do it in December for a trip in June 2011.

I agree with others – SPG is a great place to start as well!
Frequent flyer junkie

Jonathan H
What is the marriot status match going on right now? I googled and got nothing. I will look around, but if you can point me in the right direction, I would appreciate it.
Cindy M
Toula

My preference is actually Priority Club for the infrequent traveller because their points never expire which can be an issue for other programs.

I'm not a big fan of sites such as Award Wallet. I find it does not take that much effort to keep the details of account balances etc. on an Excel spreadsheet, which is what I do.
Oblivious Asinine

Rookie Tip- best program to sign up for

I am also a rookie like you, so let me tell you my perspective after learning from FT, Rick and Gary(viewfromthewing).

1. Join almost every hotel program that you stay with. Its best to spread out hotel points so that you can have points to redeem for any hotel anywhere in the world. That being said Starwood Preferred Guest is the most versatile program as others have already mentioned.

Tip: Many hotel programs have signup bonuses (e.g. Radisson frequently has 3000, Choice has 500). Enquire in FT hotel forum before you join. DONT miss out on easy free points.

2. Join one airline program in each of the major alliances-OneWorld,Star Alliance and Skyteam. The major doubt is which program to join. It depends on where and how you want to fly. If you start flying frequently within US. It might be a good idea to deposit the points to US based airlines i.e. AA, UA and Delta. This would allow you to get status with these airlines and thus get complimentary upgrades.

3. Concentrate on one airline program and move up the ladder in status. Decide the program based on the airline you fly most. In general Delta points are hard to redeem intra US though. So, I would suggest either UA or AA. Again these airlines sometimes have signup bonuses (UA recently had 6000 miles). DO NOT miss out on these free miles.

I guess that should enough for now!

Good Luck
kim r

Thanks Shannon! I just sent my info over to Rick.
Cam

Before you buy anything online, do a quick google search along the lines of "earn miles for shopping at (enter name of store website)".
For example, you want to buy a washer and dryer from Sears. Instead of going to the store and spending your $800, you buy online via the continental.com website and earn 5 miles per dollar. AND, if you have the continental credit card, you earn 10 miles per dollar. So, instead of only earning $800 for the credit card spend at Sears, you've earned as much as 8000 continental miles.
MYRflyer

agree with tivoboy
FrugalTravelGuy

Its Shannon! The Rookie-

Wonderful tips everyone. Thank you so much for your input. I am learning a ton! Lets see how the tips play out for me this week!
Anonymous

Andrew's picture was Ad-blocked immediately.
Frequent flyer junkie

Shannon
Rookie Tip
Here is a stupid Rookie mistake I made, so let this be a lesson to you and your readers!
I JUST did this, and I could kick myself for it!
During Christmas, it was late at night and I was shopping on ebay , when there was an offer to “win” an XBOX SENSOR for $2, I clicked accept and then I was locked in and was too lazy to get up and get my credit card to pay for it, so I just clicked BILL ME LATER. Well, little did I know that they ran a HARD pull on my credit report (Equifax). Can you believe that? all for $2 and me being lazy. bummer. Then a few days later I received some sort of email that gave me a $10 credit with bill me later and clicked to “apply” it, now I have an $8 credit and a HARD PULL on my credit card.
Cindy M
Jonathan

Junkie,
http://boardingarea.com/blogs/viewfromthewing/2010/11/20/free-marriott-gold-status-for-90-days/

Not status match, just free status. Then leverage that with a brand you need a status
Carol H

I am thrilled to have travel info for us rookies! Thank you Shannon!

A SUGGESTION: I would love to see a glossary of the many acronyms, used in the Frugal Travel Guy blog by Rick and everyone else, with a definition of each. We rookies are not familiar with all of the acronyms and a glossary would make it much easier for us to learn them and to understand what we are reading.
FrugalTravelGuy

The Rookie-

Carol-
Great Idea and I will Post on that , then develop a glossary that can permanently be placed on the blog. Thank you
shannon
Carol H

The Award Wallet idea was very appealing to me, so I joined and entered all my reward program information a few days ago. Now, after reading comments from tivoboy, I'm having "joiners remorse". Just how secure is our information on Award Wallet and how would we know?

Rick and Shannon – your thoughts? Anyone else?
FrugalTravelGuy

I have no joiners remorse.

Rick

Delta Bidding for Bumps and the Amex Card Offer Gets Bigger

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